


Broken

by bellabonbon



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: F/M, Lots of Angst, Suicidal Thoughts, lots and lots of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 03:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10935738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellabonbon/pseuds/bellabonbon
Summary: She squeezes her eyes shut, crouching in the handicap stall because she can’t move anywhere else. She tries to breathe, but she’s crying too hard. She feels like she’s choking.A part of her wants someone to find her. She wants one of her friends or a teacher or even some random freshman to just walk into the bathroom and find her.But they don’t.That was just one more lie he told. She’s completely freakingbroken,and no one’s coming to find her.





	Broken

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own these characters.

He doesn’t come to school for an entire week. 

She waits, every day, to see if he shows up, but he doesn’t. She doesn’t really know what she’s waiting for. What is she really going to say or do? Nothing probably. Definitely.

But she still waits.

The whole world feels like a daze around her. Sometimes she doesn’t even know if she’s awake or dreaming. Nothing seems real anymore. She doesn’t know if anything was _ever_ real. 

He wasn’t real. _They_ weren’t real.

So she doesn’t know why she waits for him.

… … …

It’s Tuesday morning when she finally sees him.

He’s walking in the opposite direction, but she spots him easily. Head down, hunched shoulders. Walking so fast that maybe no one will notice him at all. He’s easy to pick out.

She has his schedule memorized. She knows where he walks. He used to meet her right here every day after homeroom. 

Now he’s walking in the opposite direction.

… … …

She gets in trouble in English for not paying attention. Well, she gets called out for it anyway. It shocks her really, when Ms. Barnes says something about her zoning. 

“Are you planning to join us today, Ms. Murphy?”

Teachers don’t call her out on anything anymore. They haven’t all year. She can sleep or skip or be on her phone the whole class period, and no one says anything to her. They all feel so _sorry_ for her.

The novelty must be wearing off.

She hates how she blushes, giving away the fact that she’s embarrassed to be called out. She’d like to be one of those badass kids who doesn’t give a fuck if teachers try to call them out. She thinks that’d be cool- it would definitely help out her self-esteem. Or something. But she’s not one of those kids. She hates getting in trouble- especially at school- so she blushes.

She doesn’t even know what they’re talking about, but she mumbles, “Sorry,” and tries to sit up a little straighter. She feels like everyone is staring at her, and the buzzing in her brain just gets louder instead of quieter. She wants to turn it off. 

She wants to turn _everything_ off.

… … …

She can’t even concentrate in jazz band. It’s normally the one part of the day she _doesn’t_ hate, but even that’s not true anymore. She realizes it while she’s sitting there with sheet music blurring in front of her eyes.

She truly hates every second of the day.

Mr. Hurt looks at her a little weirdly when she completely screws up the song for everyone, but he doesn’t say anything. Apparently he’s still on the team of not calling her out for anything. They start over, and she just ends up quitting in the middle of the song. Her whole head is hazy and blocked. She can’t even read her music.

She ends up excusing herself. She doesn’t say anything, just slips out of the room and down the hallway to the bathroom. She doesn’t even remember walking there really, but suddenly she finds herself at the sink and wonders why no one has told her how terrible she looks. She doesn’t even recognize the girl in the mirror. 

Stringy hair. Bags under her eyes. She physically tries to force a smile just to see if she can, but she can’t. Literally can’t. She doesn’t feel like herself. Whoever that is anyway. She doesn’t even know anymore.

Her legs stop working, and she finds herself on the floor. All alone in the bathroom, leaning against the wall, not really even sure if anything around her is real. Everything is quiet. School’s over, and she’s all alone. 

She’s always been alone.

… … …

She hates being at home. Even more than normal. Things are worse now than they’ve ever been.

Worse than they were before her brother decided to destroy them.

Her dad’s never there. Her mom just cries all the time. They aren’t a family anymore. Maybe they never were. She thinks she should care more than she does, but she just… _doesn’t._ Every part of her that was capable of caring is just gone.

Dead. Just like her brother.

… … …

School isn’t any better. She keeps looking for him, waiting for him to meet her after homeroom, even though she knows he won’t.

She doesn’t know why she’s like this. She doesn’t want to think about why she’s desperate enough to be waiting for a boy who lied to her. Not just lied to her. _Destroyed_ her. Destroyed what was left of her family… 

She doesn’t know why she waits for him.

Part of her, a really desperate part, just wants to forgive him. She thinks that if he _did_ show up after homeroom and apologized that she would just forgive him. She knows that’s stupid, but she thinks it might be true.

Last year, her friend Sharra’s boyfriend cheated on her with a girl from his work. Sharra screamed and screamed about how much she hated him and what a piece of shit he was. And then she took him back within the week. Zoe judged her so hard for that, thought she would _never_ be that stupid or that desperate.

But she is.

She knows she is. She knows that if Evan Hansen walked up to her right now and said he was sorry… She would forgive him. She doesn’t know why. Maybe she’s just that pathetic.

What he did was _way_ worse than cheating. 

But she would forgive him.

… … …

He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t talk to her at all. She makes eye contact with him one time at lunch, and she can tell he never meant to look at her. They lock eyes, and he looks like he might pass out.

He leaves the cafeteria completely, and she tries to pretend like she doesn’t want to follow him.

… … …

People hate her. Strangers. They send her terrible messages on the Internet, say the worst things about her. 

She’s a stuck up bitch.

She hated her brother.

She’s the reason her brother killed himself.

She should kill herself. She deserves it. 

It should have been her, not Connor.

They write these things, send her these messages. She doesn’t know why she keeps reading them. But she does.

Her dad goes crazy. He changes all of their phone numbers, talks about forcing her off the Internet. He has some legal crap ready to retort when people harass her, threatening to report them, threatening to sue. 

It doesn’t stop anything. Really only makes it worse.

She reads everything. She doesn’t care that her parents tell her not to. She reads every comment she can find, opens every message. She wants to know what they’re saying about her. Wants to know why they hate her so badly.

She wants to know everything.

She reads comments about _them._ About her and Evan. People say she’s taking advantage of him, using him to make her own guilt disappear. He’s too good for her. She’s manipulating him. He deserves better.

They don’t know.

… … …

People at school know. She guesses they do anyway. Know they’re not together at least.

Her friends ask her what happened, why she and Evan aren’t together anymore. She doesn’t answer. She actually thinks she might start crying if she says anything, so she just shakes her head and says she doesn’t want to talk about it. 

She _can’t_ talk about it. She can’t tell the truth, even if she wanted to.

She doesn’t want to.

… … …

She feels like a stalker. 

She looks for him everywhere, watches him in the hallways at school, stares at him from the other side of the cafeteria. She tries to will him to look at her, but it never works. He doesn’t ever look at her. He doesn’t look at anyone. She doesn’t see him looking at anyone, talking to anyone. 

He’s trying to disappear, she can tell. 

She sees him everywhere.

… … …

She runs into Jared at CVS one afternoon. Literally runs into him. She stops there after school to pick up some facewash. 

They turn a corner at the same time and run straight into each other.

She stares at him after a stumbled apology she would never have uttered if she saw him first. He looks at her, and they don’t say anything. He looks weird, nervous maybe. 

Finally, he mumbles out, “Hey, Zoe…”

She just stares at him. She wonders if he knows. He was probably in on it all along. Maybe they all were. She imagines them laughing at her while she fell for the lies. They probably made fun of her, of how stupid she was to believe any of it.

She opens her mouth to say something- she doesn’t even know what- but then his mom is there behind him. She smiles that sad sympathetic smile that Zoe has come to hate. The one people always give her when they see her and don’t know what to say. The one that means nothing but is somehow supposed to make things better.

Zoe walks away. She doesn’t buy her facewash.

… … …

She draws on things. She always has. On books, on napkins, on her clothes, on her shoes. She doodles, always has, anything to keep her hands busy. 

She’s on her bed with her English notes open in front of her. There’s a unit test tomorrow, and she has to at least pretend to care. So she’s reading over stuff from the past few weeks. She finds a worksheet, covered in the normal doodles. Stars, hearts, clouds… She was bored that day, scribbling her name in with the doodles. 

_Zoe Hansen._

She wrote it, scrawled it into a corner between some hearts like she’s twelve. She stares at it now, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. What the hell _is_ wrong with her. 

Why is she like this?

Why is she so obsessed with him? She just wants him back. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t even care if he apologizes. She just wants him to _look_ at her.

She could call him. She could call him and tell him she doesn’t care about anything else. She just wants him. The rest of it doesn’t matter. They could get back together. She could be kissing him by the end of the night.

Her parents would never let it happen.

They would forbid it. There’s no way they’d ever let her be with him, not after everything.

But they could run away. Maybe. She imagines it for a second. Running away from her family, away from school, away from the complete bullshit of her life. Just running away with him. Where they could start over, just the two of them, all by themselves. She has enough money to get them out of here. They could disappear. 

Just start over.

What the hell is wrong with her?

She crumples up the worksheet and throws it across the room.

… … …

She can’t deal with it anymore. She feels like she’s going crazy. She _knows_ she’s going crazy.

She ends up crying in the bathroom while she’s supposed to be in chemistry. 

She feels like she can’t breathe. Her chest hurts, her heart is pounding… She thinks she might die. 

She squeezes her eyes shut, crouching in the handicap stall because she can’t move anywhere else. She tries to breathe, but she’s crying too hard. She feels like she’s choking. 

A part of her wants someone to find her. She wants one of her friends or a teacher or even some random freshman to just walk into the bathroom and find her. 

But they don’t.

That was just one more lie he told. She’s completely fucking _broken,_ and no one’s coming to find her.

… … …

She skips band for the third day in a row and just goes home. Her dad’s at work, and her mom texted saying she was running errands and would bring dinner home. 

Somehow the house feels no quieter or emptier than it normally does.

She spends an hour in her room, reading comments on the blog. Alana monitors it, deletes a lot of the bad stuff, but Zoe’s meticulous enough in stalking it that she doesn’t think she misses much. 

_I heard they broke up- Evan must be devastated. Can’t imagine what that bitch did to him. Evan, if you’re reading this, we’re all here for you._

**She’s always thought she was too good for him. Stuck up bitch.**

_Better be careful before her daddy comes here and tries to sue you! You know he actually cares about her. Too bad he never cared about Connor like that!_

She reads all the comments and just feels numb. She doesn’t even know these people. She doesn’t know why they all hate her so badly. They don’t even _know_ her.

She drops her phone and somehow finds herself getting up and going next door. To Connor’s room. She doesn’t even know why. Her feet just take her there.

His room looks just like it always has. Maybe a little cleaner. But nothing’s changed. 

She thinks back to the last time she was in here before everything was destroyed. She didn’t come in here a lot. Never had a reason to. Connor didn’t want her in here. 

It was late summer, maybe a week or two before school started. Before. _Before._ Money was missing from her purse. He took it. She knew he did. He always took from her She went to his room, screaming and demanding that he give her the money back. He yelled back, called her a cunt, and told her to get the hell out of his room.

He’s not there to yell at her now.

She doesn’t know why she’s opening his closet. She just pulls the door open and finds herself staring into it. She wasn’t here when it happened, didn’t see him in here. She wonders what he looked like, just hanging in here. Dead.

The next thing she knows, she’s dragging his desk chair to the closet and shoving it inside. She takes a step closer to it and looks up. There’s a small crack in the support beam. Connor was just slightly too heavy for it. 

One step and then two, and then she’s standing on the chair, staring out into his bedroom from inside the closet.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing.

She closes her eyes and tries to imagine what he was feeling when he stood here like this. What was he thinking? Did he try to talk himself out of it? Was he excited? Was he _scared?_

She remembers once when they were kids- probably like nine or ten- their parents took them to a cabin in the mountains. It had a huge deck in the back, pretty high off the ground. She remembers they were outside on the deck. There was a hot tub and a dartboard and some other stuff they thought was semi fun. She doesn’t know where their parents were, but they weren’t around. Connor got bored with the darts and walked over to look out over the deck. She remembers how cool the view was from there- her mom took a bunch of pictures of it on that trip. He was just standing there looking out at everything, and then he climbed up and stood on top of the railing. Zoe thought it looked pretty cool, so she copied him. Sometimes she copied him a lot when they were kids. 

It was kind of scary standing there. But she remembers feeling like she was on a tightrope in the circus. She liked it, and they just stood there. It kind of seemed like they could see the whole world. 

But then Connor looked over at her and just said, “Push me.” She thought he was crazy and asked what the hell he was talking about. But he just kept looking at her and said. “ _Push_ me. I want to know what it feels like.”

“What _what_ feels like?”

“To just fall.”

Even back then, she knew that was weird. But maybe she was too young to know _how_ weird. She just shook her head, “I’m not going to push you.” And then she laughed like it was a joke. “Just jump.”

But he didn’t laugh. He just looked back out at the ground below them and said, “Can’t. I’m too scared.”

Zoe immediately steps down from the chair and pulls it back to his desk. She shuts the closet door and then leaves his room completely. 

… …. …

A few weeks later that same summer, she got mad at him and pushed him off the trampoline in their backyard. He sprained his wrist, and she got grounded. 

Later, after their mom was out of earshot, Zoe told him she hated him and wished he’d hurt more than his wrist. He told her that he hated her back. He hit her with his uninjured hand, and then he got grounded, too.

She wishes now that she never pushed him.

… … …

She can’t go to school the next morning. She just can’t. And that’s what she tells her mom when she comes to wake her up.

Her mom is obviously concerned because she immediately asks, “What’s wrong? Are you sick?” And then she throws a hand against Zoe’s forehead to check for a fever.

And Zoe doesn’t know what it is or why it happens, but that breaks her or something. She starts crying, just breaks down and sobs into her pillow. She feels ridiculous and tries to stop, but the more she focuses on stopping, the harder she seems to cry.

And of course, her mom is a fucking mess right with her. 

“What’s wrong?” She feels the bed shift slightly when her mom sits down, but she doesn’t look at her. “Zoe… Honey, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I just-“ She gulps in some air, trying to breathe more easily, and blurts out, “I miss him!”

And then her mom’s eyes start watering, and she bites down on her lip and nods. “I know, honey. I know you miss him…”

And Zoe looks at her and thinks what a fuck up she is because she knows her mom thinks she’s talking about Connor, and she’s not. It makes her feel like shit, but it also pisses her off because not everything in the entire fucking world is about Connor.

“I’m talking about Evan!”

Her mom’s whole face changes because of course it does. What kind of person can grieve for a pathological liar who manipulated and frauded their whole family and the entire world… but can’t grieve for their dead brother? 

Zoe starts crying even harder, and she’s a little surprised that her mom doesn’t just leave her there to rot like the piece of crap that she is. Instead, she moves until she’s leaning against the headboard and pulls Zoe’s head into her lap. It makes Zoe feel even worse because she knows she doesn’t deserve this kind of comfort. 

But her mom just sits there, rubbing one hand up and down Zoe’s arm and using her other to gently smooth down and pet the top of her hair. And Zoe just lies there and cries. And her mom just lets her.

“I slept with him…”

She doesn’t know why she says it. She doesn’t want to see her mom’s reaction, but she looks anyway. She looks a little horrified and a lot disappointed, and Zoe can just imagine what she’s thinking. 

But she just runs her hand over Zoe’s hair and says, “Oh, honey…” 

“I’m sorry…” She hears herself apologizing, doesn’t even really know why. She just hates how disappointed her mom looks.

“I wish you had just _talked_ to me.”

Talk to her about _what_ , though? They don’t have that type of relationship. They’re not the damn Gilmore Girls. She can’t imagine telling her mom that he confessed that he’d liked her for years or that she felt like nobody else in the world matter except for the two of them. Or how neither one of them had any idea what the hell they were doing or how he couldn’t even speak afterwards. And how they just lay there together on his stupid too-small twin bed, with his face hidden in her neck while she played with his hair a little bit and just tried to match his breathing. 

Or how she was positive in that moment that she was in love with him and so thankful that _finally_ the universe had given her something that was just _hers._

She can’t tell her mom any of that, so she just apologizes again and squeezes her eyes shut while she tries to stop crying.

… … …

She would never kill herself, but if she did, she would leave a note.

A _real_ Dear Evan Hansen.

Maybe she’d even post it online so that everyone could see. Maybe everyone would finally see the real her. _Know_ her. Not just the her they’ve invented in their heads.

She’d tell him how much she hates him for lying. She’d say what a piece of shit he is. She’d tell him that she hopes he burns in hell. 

She’d be lying.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about that...


End file.
